It has been the practice in the cutting of webs of paper and plastic to provide a group of cutters across the path of the webs to accomplish the cutting of the wide web into a series of ribbons. It has been the normal practice to provide simple manual adjustment in the clamping of the cutters and their supports whenever it is necessary that adjustment of the cutters be made. It is desirable to minimize the time needed for adjustment of the cutters when making major adjustments. Further, it is desirable that the fine adjustments of the cutters may be performed while the machine is operating without down-time or loss of production material.
There have been proposed systems for adjustment of the cutter that form the slitter systems for paper handling. The systems suggested such as those in U.S. Pat. No. 3,583,270--Web, Canadian Pat. No. 712,861--Patterson, and Canadian No. 884,138--Osborn, et al. to provide threaded rods upon which the cutters of the slitter system are moved. It also is proposed that the location of cutters on such rods be electrically controlled. However, such systems having automatic control and means to clamp and unclamp the slitters to the adjusting screw are complicated and expensive.
In the cutting of coform material which is a air-formed mixture of wood fibers and meltblown polypropylene, there has been a need for a cutter system that is rapidly adjustable, very accurate, and low in cost. In the formation of coform, the speeds of formation are not extremely high, such as in paper forming and treatment, and the production levels cannot justify at this time the extremely expensive computer-controlled slitter equipment. There has remained a need for a easily-adjustable cutter system that has extreme accuracy and dependability. There further is a need for a cutter system that is easily adjustable, both for major adjustments and for minor adjustments between adjacent cutters while the machine is operating.